High Signal Podcasts Evidence ledger
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Public evidence record

Brian Tolkin

Published podcast speaker

Claims
16
Episodes
1
Shows
1
Named items
5

Books, apps, and tools

The evidenced stack.

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other / likes

Founders Podcast

“Yeah, I mean, I think exposing yourself to other people's stories or however you may learn is really, really helpful. So again, whether it's your podcast or books or biographies or one of the podcasts that I love is Founders Podcast, which talks about historical famous entrepreneurs.”

Lenny's Podcast · 4 Aug 2024

Evidence receipt · Source ↗

service / likes

Netflix

“I like the sports docu ones on Netflix, so Full Swing, Drive to Survive, Break Points, tennis, golf, F1, all of them.”

Lenny's Podcast · 4 Aug 2024

Evidence receipt · Source ↗

book / recommends

Shoe dog

“Shoe dog, Black Swan, Design of Everyday Things, and for a fun one, Shawn Theron.”

Lenny's Podcast · 4 Aug 2024

Evidence receipt · Source ↗

book / recommends

Black Swan

“Shoe dog, Black Swan, Design of Everyday Things, and for a fun one, Shawn Theron.”

Lenny's Podcast · 4 Aug 2024

Evidence receipt · Source ↗

book / recommends

Design of Everyday Things

“Shoe dog, Black Swan, Design of Everyday Things, and for a fun one, Shawn Theron.”

Lenny's Podcast · 4 Aug 2024

Evidence receipt · Source ↗

Claim ledger

What Brian said.

16 transcript-backed records

04 / uncertainty

X. So UberX and then the company was moving quickly enough, the product got the green light, it launched, and here we are, I don't know, 12 years later, 11 years later, whatever it is and UberX is the name that stuck.

“X. So UberX and then the company was moving quickly enough, the product got the green light, it launched, and here we are, I don't know, 12 years later, 11 years later, whatever it is and UberX is the name that stuck.”
Speaker
Brian Tolkin
Publisher
Lenny's Podcast

05 / belief

We, I would say have oscillated over time, but in general, big subscribers of the best conversations happen when they're relatively small, so try and keep it under 10.

“We, I would say have oscillated over time, but in general, big subscribers of the best conversations happen when they're relatively small, so try and keep it under 10.”
Speaker
Brian Tolkin
Publisher
Lenny's Podcast

06 / belief

I think when you think about it, they have tremendous amount of reach and audience and all these online platforms have tremendous reach and audience.

“I think when you think about it, they have tremendous amount of reach and audience and all these online platforms have tremendous reach and audience.”
Speaker
Brian Tolkin
Publisher
Lenny's Podcast

08 / commitment

I would say we're medium rigorous on template standardization or adherence. So we do have a template, the standard product review template talks about jobs to be done and has a section for what is the problem statement and what are the jobs to be done.

“I would say we're medium rigorous on template standardization or adherence. So we do have a template, the standard product review template talks about jobs to be done and has a section for what is the problem statement and what are the jobs to be done.”
Speaker
Brian Tolkin
Publisher
Lenny's Podcast

09 / evaluation

That would've been probably a little bit before my time, but that being said, one thing that is true is that surge pricing for actually quite sometimes all of 2012, certainly 2013 probably, I don't know when we necessarily switched, was very much a human in the loop system or a very manual system where GMs in every city would control basically the parameters in which surge would operate and so much of the time that would need, for example, Monday through Friday, there would be no search, it couldn't flip on, and then Friday nights and Saturday nights it would flip on from whatever you set, 7:00 PM to 3:00 AM and the cap was X, whatever the cap was.

“That would've been probably a little bit before my time, but that being said, one thing that is true is that surge pricing for actually quite sometimes all of 2012, certainly 2013 probably, I don't know when we necessarily switched, was very much a human in the loop system or a very manual system where GMs in every city would control basically the parameters in which surge would operate and so much of the time that would need, for example, Monday through Friday, there would be no search, it couldn't flip on, and then Friday nights and Saturday nights it would flip on from whatever you set, 7:00 PM to 3:00 AM and the cap was X, whatever the cap was.”
Speaker
Brian Tolkin
Publisher
Lenny's Podcast

10 / preference

Something that gets me personally to the high bucket category. And then I think the last part, which is some part of experimentation is if you just ship something because it's your intuition or it's where you want to see the product go, do you have a reasonable feedback loop to understand whether or not you are correct?

“Something that gets me personally to the high bucket category. And then I think the last part, which is some part of experimentation is if you just ship something because it's your intuition or it's where you want to see the product go, do you have a reasonable feedback loop to understand whether or not you are correct?”
Speaker
Brian Tolkin
Publisher
Lenny's Podcast

11 / evaluation

Then it was pretty stressful, right, because looking at a business that relies on going into people's homes and suddenly you can't do that anymore, what do you do?

“Then it was pretty stressful, right, because looking at a business that relies on going into people's homes and suddenly you can't do that anymore, what do you do?”
Speaker
Brian Tolkin
Publisher
Lenny's Podcast

12 / evaluation

The reality is operations teams, local teams, can iterate faster, can scale talking to customers really much more efficiently, have great qualitative insights, and so if it's seen more as a harmony instead of a competition, I think that's really, really helpful where it's like, okay, how do we get the insights that are happening day in and day out in the field, on the ground, whatever that may be, and help us build better products because of that, right?

“The reality is operations teams, local teams, can iterate faster, can scale talking to customers really much more efficiently, have great qualitative insights, and so if it's seen more as a harmony instead of a competition, I think that's really, really helpful where it's like, okay, how do we get the insights that are happening day in and day out in the field, on the ground, whatever that may be, and help us build better products because of that, right?”
Speaker
Brian Tolkin
Publisher
Lenny's Podcast

13 / recommendation

Yeah, I mean, I think exposing yourself to other people's stories or however you may learn is really, really helpful. So again, whether it's your podcast or books or biographies or one of the podcasts that I love is Founders Podcast, which talks about historical famous entrepreneurs.

“Yeah, I mean, I think exposing yourself to other people's stories or however you may learn is really, really helpful. So again, whether it's your podcast or books or biographies or one of the podcasts that I love is Founders Podcast, which talks about historical famous entrepreneurs.”
Speaker
Brian Tolkin
Publisher
Lenny's Podcast

14 / evaluation

The reality is it's the largest asset classroom in the United States, and if we just stay super focused on, hey, who are the customers that we serve really well that we talk to every day, there's a little bit of confidence that comes from being able to stay focused on that regardless of the competitive environment, again, because it's not like the market is fully saturated.

“The reality is it's the largest asset classroom in the United States, and if we just stay super focused on, hey, who are the customers that we serve really well that we talk to every day, there's a little bit of confidence that comes from being able to stay focused on that regardless of the competitive environment, again, because it's not like the market is fully saturated.”
Speaker
Brian Tolkin
Publisher
Lenny's Podcast

15 / commitment

A second lesson here, is there certain experiments that are important enough and it's hard to triangulate signal in any other way that you may say a six-month runtime is an acceptable outcome and we are going to start it in June and we will be smarter for it for 2025 planning and we're going to set it and forget it and we're grateful we did, and that's okay.

“A second lesson here, is there certain experiments that are important enough and it's hard to triangulate signal in any other way that you may say a six-month runtime is an acceptable outcome and we are going to start it in June and we will be smarter for it for 2025 planning and we're going to set it and forget it and we're grateful we did, and that's okay.”
Speaker
Brian Tolkin
Publisher
Lenny's Podcast

16 / preference

We try to for course the framework if it's not working. But I think what I really like about it is it forces you to put yourself in the customer's shoes.

“We try to for course the framework if it's not working. But I think what I really like about it is it forces you to put yourself in the customer's shoes.”
Speaker
Brian Tolkin
Publisher
Lenny's Podcast
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